In today’s digital age, a brand’s reputation is more fragile than ever. With the power of social media, a single misstep can lead to a public relations nightmare overnight. This post will explore effective strategies that CEOs can implement to shift from reactive damage control to proactive reputation management.
Key Takeaways
- Embracing data-driven insights
- Developing a comprehensive crisis plan
- Monitoring historical data
- Integrating human elements with technology
- Addressing legacy system vulnerabilities
Transcript
Kchristaihne Castillo (00:05.174)
I’m K, the marketing coordinator here at Above Promotions. Today, we are discussing a topic that keeps many CEOs and COOs up at night, reputation management. in an era where a single technical glitch or a misunderstood data point can go viral, protecting your brand online is no longer just a PR. It’s about operational resilience. So joining us again is our CEO, Ebony Vaz. Ebony’s unique.
perspective as an engineer and incident response strategies allows her to see brand reputation through the lens of structural integrity. Hi Ebony, ready to dive into our topic for this month?
Ebony Vaz (00:48.474)
I am and it’s so funny it’s somehow we just magically both have on the same color top today and we’re both rocking these blue backgrounds so you would think that we coordinated this but not even in the least we’re just in sync like that we’re just in sync
Kchristaihne Castillo (01:04.85)
Yeah, so definitely. So let’s get into the questions and help our listeners to move from reactive damage control to proactive brand protection. So from a strategic insights standpoint, we often say reputation isn’t just PR, it’s behavioral. So how does understanding human behavior
and statistical data help a leader move from reactive damage control to a proactive strategy of informed anticipation.
Ebony Vaz (01:40.066)
So I love this question. Really, my background in human factors really just loves this part when we’re talking about crisis and resiliency. And so when we think about the human behavior part of it, there are certain things that get triggered no matter what happens. If someone yells fire in a public building, everybody’s going to take off running. They don’t know where the fire is at.
they’re just gonna take off running. And so there are certain human behaviors that are just going to be always happening. And so when we think about how does that…
work with crisis communications. Well, again, someone says fire and maybe the fire is not actually a physical fire burning. is the company is under some type of internal attack, cyber security, some rogue employee. That is our fire within the company. And so immediately people begin to panic. That’s a human behavior that soon as something goes wrong, people start to get anxiety.
they start to stress, they panic. Not everyone goes into Superman mode or superwoman mode when something goes wrong. And so when we think about human behaviors in terms of damage controls and crises, we know that there’s certain things that are just gonna happen when things go wrong. And so from there we can say statistically, how quickly are we able to successfully navigate a particular incident? And that’s why it’s so important to have these
crisis plans, these incident response plans in place. And those are the things that we continuously see that companies are thinking about what happens if this happens and that happens. And then they have a response that they put inside of a book and no one goes into it. But every few months when it’s time to do a table top exercise. But what I like to do is to layer onto that and to think about statistically, what are the odds of succeeding? You can have a plan.
Ebony Vaz (03:45.768)
But what are the odds of succeeding with the plan? And how do those odds and statistics change as time goes on? And so that really makes a big difference in helping to move from reactive to damage control and having a really successful proactive plan and strategy in place.
Kchristaihne Castillo (04:09.73)
definitely agree with that one, especially right now with what’s going on around the world. Everyone really has to have that incident response plan in place. So when it comes to reputation, how can AI-driven insights help us identify shifts in audience sentiment before they manifest as a public crisis? What should leaders look for in those early patterns?
Ebony Vaz (04:35.109)
So one of the things that, and I, you know, we use the term AI a lot and it can be categorized in so many different ways. And so what I like to come back from saying AI in this particular instance is currently there’s always, not always, but for a very long time, Google has always,
has had a feature called Google Alerts. So let’s just step back from that.
and go back to just a simple, what happens if Google search finds a particular name and keyword that you have set aside for it to notify you of? So these days, now there’s several software that will allow you to do that. What keywords can you set up to help identify when someone is talking about your brand? That even works as far as what happens when people are talking about your brand on social media. What happens if an influencer you’re thinking
about working with, have they used your brand name in the past and how did it look like? What did the audience take away from that statement? Because there, we know that people can report the news, we know that people can report their feedback on a product online, but what…
is the audience reaction to that. And so that’s kind of been in place for a while. And as AI moved along, we began to see how that could work even live and in person. So for instance, for us, if your company comes to us and say, want to get real time audience sentiment, we can do that because we can use computer vision, which is a form of AI to get that in real time in any type of retail space and any type of
Ebony Vaz (06:26.399)
public domain space, whether it’s a park, it’s concerts, we can get that anywhere that there’s a group of people, thanks to AI and the ability to be able to pull up audience sentiment from that aspect. So having a good baseline.
is going to be key. So we can automatically do searches, views of a brand’s reputation right now. Let’s say things are going great. Nothing’s happened for 12 months. We can take that and look at as a baseline. Let’s say nothing happens for another 12 months. We can then build that data onto that time frame. And now it’s even better because we can kind of line up January to January, August to August and be able to see
and track plans and numbers. And this is why we’re always talking about here our storytelling science and technology framework, because you need to be able to look at the data. It’s going to be very important for you to understand the science between consumer psychology and what happens. if you trans, if you are
tracking it with technology on a regular basis, this gives you a baseline to know that when it’s time and something happens, you can actually be able to monitor it. Because perhaps you go out and you find out everybody’s talking about the brand right now because they found out that there was a defect in the product. But you could already be getting a natural spike in March. You wouldn’t know this just based off of looking at this one data point.
So that’s why we always think about like.
Ebony Vaz (08:08.221)
let’s get the data and then on top of that what we do with the data and how long we keep the data that’s even more beyond the scope for this conversation on data governance but when we look at the fact that we have access to technology they can get data points that allows us to know what people are saying what they think of the brand and then when something happens we at least have some idea of perhaps because we’re running this summer spring special
We always know that we’re going to already get a lot of activities and so we might begin even more activity because something went wrong.
but how can we parse out the data to find out what actually happened and what’s good and the bad. And that all begins with the type of insights that you have beforehand, before the crisis manifests so that you can look ahead. And the more data that you have in these data points, and again, this is why we can easily work with clients on this whole topic is because of the fact that you have the ability to be able to look ahead.
and say we know that occasionally we have about a 10 % defect when we run a production for like 10,000 units of something. So again, is this jump in people talking about the product because we just released and we know we have a certain percentage of defects that we know won’t allow to happen in the product when it goes out.
Then I have the ability to be able to say we got to make sure we have enough customer service. We have enough marketing research points. We are going out into the community to see and quickly resolve those issues because we are in that threshold that we allow for. So these are things that continue to manifest when you are driving a very innovative process and a proactive process for these types of incidents.
Kchristaihne Castillo (10:08.75)
That’s why it is very important that we don’t only look ahead, we also look at the past for us to know. We always learn from everything that happens in the past. So it’s very important that we take a look at the history of our analytics so we’ll know what we’ll do moving forward when we encounter the same problem again.
While tools can track sentiment, they often miss the human “why?” So how does the Strategic Insight Center reach the gap between AI data and human empathy to ensure a brand’s response feels authentic rather than robotic during a disruption?
Ebony Vaz (10:54.401)
So, you know, for us with our Strategic Insight Center, we are definitely…
very heavy into trying to determine what are the best ways to get internal teams trained, what are the best ways to get communities to thrive as they’re working with the technologies, especially when we look at AI. just a quick plug for our fans, we do have a book and some certifications coming out in this particular area. We really want to focus on the human in the loop. And so when we look at that process,
Whether it is in a technical innovation role, whether it is in a marketing and communications role, we have to have that because right now, as much as…
How much data points are currently in these large language models? No matter what platform people are using, there’s always this component of understanding and translating the data, but not only from understanding what comes out from those LLMs, but also what you’re putting in. Because if you don’t put in a full picture, if you don’t give it the full understanding of what could happen in a particular industry or a particular scenario,
you’re not going to get a response back that will be of use to you. And I’ll tell you now in watching the behavior of how people utilize AI, they utilize it, get a lot of different results, but very rarely implement it. Or they implement so quickly that they don’t realize that they missed the human element of it. And so yes, we can always prep.
Ebony Vaz (12:42.817)
for when something goes wrong, we can always prep to have our incident response plan, but there still has to be this human element that will help guide because we can lay out hundred scenarios and a response plan, but just a tweak of 5 % in that plan could actually change how things are produced on the backend. And also let’s face it, it’s not pulling out real time data.
because you asked a question. So we need the human to come along and pull in and provide more real-time data.
There’s a lot of tell signs. People talk about the dash being one of them. The flow of the words. Sometimes the words don’t match what the brand’s voice is. There’s many different ways in which people can tell now, especially those who are in the more innovative spaces when a human has responded and when a AI robot has was a agent has responded.
And so that’s becoming very, it’s coming talked about a lot more. And even from just like the marketing standpoint, I think people thought it was cute when they could create all these AI generated cartoon looking items, but also, and even just this weekend reading over some comments from people, they’re tired of seeing it. They thought it was cute, but it doesn’t seem original to the brand. so how, what, how is that affecting them? That is
providing a more robotic response, it’s not showing the personality. So all of these things add up and when people start to invest in you and they become their ambassadors for you and they get, they actually reach out to you to discuss something and the response they get back is lacking empathy. It is not helping them to answer the question. And then there are those people, you get the run around, you call in a number, can’t get to someone human.
Ebony Vaz (14:52.713)
frustrated as to compare to them saying, you know what, I heard about XYZ company, I’m going to go over there, take my business over there because they’re still using humans in this process. They’re still listening to what I have to say. And even if they can’t solve the problem right there, they’re least showing that they’re making an attempt to get the problem solved. it’s going to be very important to keep that empathy in and to keep that human element in. so whenever we’re doing training that comes out of the Strategic Insight Center,
it is always about that human in the loop process. How do humans process the data that they received and the process of the data that they give out and how will that help to tell the story? You look at the computer, the consumer science, the data science behind it and what technology should be used because just because you can implement technology, we teach that you should not just implement for the sake of implementing.
Kchristaihne Castillo (15:50.19)
When you mentioned about the em dash thing because like in the past even before AI came, like a lot of people from the 80s, 90s were writing their essays with em dashes, things like that. And people don’t realize that as time passed by, us human are
actually teaching this AI on how to craft these copies, captions that we are creating. But still, bottom line, is still very important that you try your very best to still put that human element. Make sure you proofread. Make sure you just use it to just get information or
get an idea on what you’re going to work on. a recurring theme in our strategic insight center is the risk of legacy system vulnerabilities. How can outdated technology, things a CEO might not see every day, actually create a reputation countdown that leads to a brand crisis?
Ebony Vaz (17:06.241)
So it’s so funny, I was watching on YouTube yesterday evening, a guy talking about the failures of Kodak and Blockbuster and how they were so busy trying to protect what currently worked that they missed the moment of change and which could have catapulted the company.
And so you have some companies that are so focused on the legacy of what is working that they get left behind. And they end up getting to a point where they become the laggards. They’re the last ones to improve into innovation. And so what they’ll start to do is start to test things out. They’ll start to start implementing newer technologies, et cetera, all while leaving.
the outdated technology still active, still open, still vulnerable to the company. And so we know the longer some of the
tools, the technical tools that sit that are unattended that aren’t being watched diligently from a security standpoint, even from an access management standpoint, that they can end up being at the point of failure. So when we think about an outdated technology and how CEOs might not see them, if you’re coming in to an organization that has had to have a big
legacy update and refresh and all the tools and methods of things, you could actually end up seeing the fact that those tools end up biting you in the butt because they were never deactivated. They were never not used. I think the other aspect of it too is let’s think of it from a healthcare. I think the healthcare industry and not to pick on them, but I think they are probably one of the slowest to adapt.
Ebony Vaz (19:10.548)
And so you think about it, you might have a lot of different doctors that you go to and some of them, they’re part of huge healthcare systems. And so those huge healthcare systems will update people to more on the latest technology where people can log into their platform. They can forward their medical records on to other doctors. They can go in and look at the last notes from their doctors. They can schedule all within the platform.
Now think about the one doctor who might not be a part of that large healthcare center. The one doctor that’s still holding out as independent doctor. And thank God for those people because we need more independent doctors. But if they’re not keeping up with the technology that people are used to having, if they’re not utilizing online platforms that people can go and submit notes to, submit their records to, if they’re not using these things, that is in itself
I think is where we can say this is the reputation countdown because now they’re starting to look like they’re not keeping up with the latest technology. Are they keeping up with the latest in treating illnesses? So all of these things kind of come to a forefront. If you continue to lag behind, that’s going to be seen as a negative, but at the same time again,
I’m watching YouTube and talking to this expert and he was saying how a lot of even younger people now are kind of trying to step away from screen time because they realize it has a negative effect on them. So we’ve got this reverse happening where people are like, I don’t want as much technology. So we have to be able to balance that. And what is that saying and who we are trying to reach and have a clear understanding
of the direction in which people might go and I think that’s very important.
Ebony Vaz (21:16.034)
from that marketing standpoint than always doing that research, always doing that sentiment analysis so that the CMO can work with the CEO to ensure that the direction of the organization is moving forward and not moving too far back that it becomes a reputation harm, but not moving too far forward that people don’t want to deal with it. Because there’s still people as much as we see, because we’re always using different technical tools. So as much as we see,
technology advancing like within our space and what we’re doing there’s still a whole population of people who don’t want to only access and talk with technology they still want to talk to a bank teller they still want to go to see the doctor in person and not tell a hell so these are the types of things that we have to continue to balance and so when we’re talking to and teaching from our strategic insight center during the workshops we’re always trying to think about that human in the loop and how to keep it going
Kchristaihne Castillo (22:18.284)
I definitely agree. That’s why one of our slogans model here at Above Promotions is “Innovation meets impact”. It’s definitely very important that we always try to innovate and try to stay up to date with all the trends. So in your experience with incident response, why is the alignment between technical truth and the brand narrative so critical?
How does a failure in unified communication fundamentally damage the long-term strategic authority of a leader?
Ebony Vaz (22:51.612)
Okay, that’s a lot. so let me let me a little bit here
Unified communication. So let’s set the audience on the stage for that. Unified communication. Let’s say we have a breach. If only the CTO and CISO know. If only the IT department knows. If only the marketing team knows what happens when someone in the warehouse finds out about it and doesn’t know how to navigate that there could be like a breach or something’s
wrong logistics wise. What happens if no one informs the receptionist? What happens from these aspects? And so that’s when we think about that unified communication. Like how can we all move forward on the same page? Because you don’t want someone from the company sharing with a vendor, sharing with the customer, sharing with the media, anything that has gone wrong. So that is what we really just want to level set when we talk about that unified
communication. So from a standpoint of alignment between the technical truth and the brand narrative, it is always good to go with the truth because you don’t want to put out something that is far from being truthful.
And I think that, you know, just from a standpoint of having gone through that with a client and they.
Ebony Vaz (24:29.058)
told people that there was something wrong with the bank. So people, were going to cut out paper checks for a couple of month, paychecks. And people would have to get their paycheck, go to the bank and they could cash the bank and then go over to their own bank and put the money in. And it’s a bank issue. That’s the issue. It wasn’t the bank issue. It was an employee who went in because no one closed out their credentials and they went in and did some damage. And so they had to cut everything off to prevent them from doing any more damage.
And so internally, that was a very critical truth that didn’t come out. once it started to come out, it became apparent that perhaps the company wasn’t keeping the employees’ best interests at heart.
And so that was more like an internal issue. And so let’s talk about it externally. So what happens when you have you’re producing the food product and some people get sick off of that food product and you indicate that no, actually, I’m I’m going to give you another example. I’m not going to use the company’s name because this came to me perfectly. So there was a hair care product that a lot of
very popular amongst, they spend a lot of money in the influencer space. And so people started to report that there were issues with the products and that their hair started falling out. And so the brand was like, no, there’s nothing wrong with the products. We’ve tested it. We looked at it, contact us, et cetera. So they continue to use that claim for months and months and months and months.
and come to find out that no, it wasn’t the product, but it was the container that they were using. They decided to use a different container for the product and there was some type of leakage in there. And so that became a big reputation hit for them. I’m not even sure if that company is still around. I don’t see them pushing it too often. But I think that from a standpoint,
Ebony Vaz (26:46.976)
point of there being a technical truth and what the brand was trying to put out, it was completely in line. Maybe it took them a while to realize that
The art formula solution didn’t change, but you know what our vendor who we switched the types of bottles we were using didn’t tell us that these bottles had XYZ and it would have this interaction, but whatever we were putting in our chemicals and so into the bare hair products. And so there’s a difference between femininity defending like that you’re good. There’s nothing wrong to
being like we have no we have not changed our formula but we are taking all these responses and your feedback into consideration and we are doing a very deep dive that’s a totally different response
then you just saying there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong. You’re doing that for like almost a year and then it’s like, okay, well we’ve changed this and changed that and this is a great product. Not telling people. So there’s that brand reputational hit. And then there’s also the fact that the attorney will tell you, you should only say so much either way because…
they have to protect the company and mitigate what it could or cannot be part of the liability of things. And so there’s a very fine line usually when a response comes between what the attorney wants to say, what the CMO wants to say, what the CEO wants to say, what the board of directors wants to say. But somewhere in the middle of all that, there’s truth that can keep the brand appearing to be proactive.
Ebony Vaz (28:41.106)
while also investigating when something has gone wrong. And so for me, without having that unified communication, without taking a more of a standpoint of we appreciate all the support you’ve given us and you guys know our product well, that type of approach and sharing like how you are actively trying to fix the problem. I think that’s where you fail.
by communication and not being willing to find that line of truth that
works alongside. And that’s difficult when it is a cybersecurity incident because the truth could actually tip off the person who’s trying to hack you. So yes, you can say we’ve had some type of incident that has happened and we are actively looking into it, but you’re not your CTO, your CISO is never gonna want.
It’s never ever, CSL is never going to want you to tell them exactly what happened because they are trying to actively fix the patch and they are working with internal vendors and external vendors and new vendors and all these people to kind of fix this problem. So there, there won’t ever be a full transparency as to what is going on in real time when it has to do with cybersecurity hack. But there is a level of truth there that you can always display. so going with the truth is always good. Like they say, the truth will set you free.
So I would definitely recommend going that route.
Kchristaihne Castillo (30:21.12)
me I would recommend going with the truth and maybe getting someone who’s really good at PR like Above Promotions
Ebony Vaz (30:27.863)
Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
Kchristaihne Castillo (30:33.486)
So for those looking to quantify their resilience, what specific behavioral metrics or qualitative data points should we be tracking to measure the true health and stability of our brand reputation?
Ebony Vaz (30:47.073)
Mm-hmm.
Well, I tell you it’s not likes and shares. That’s more vanity than anything. I think it all boils down to, we talked before and I mentioned earlier about having the data points from before when things seem calm to having the data points now. Those data points are how or where people are coming into your brand, how and when they buying.
when are they buying? And so when you start to look at that, you can dive deeper into saying, is it an internal or external trigger for when they’re purchasing from you? What happens?
like at this time of season is that change if it’s an internal or external. So for instance, I get example of socks. That is truly something that people might buy throughout the year when their need is external. They got a hole in their sock. They don’t want their foot and their toe slipping in their shoe because they got a hole in their sock. That’s an external factor. But somehow for some reason,
Father’s Day and Christmas seems to be a big day for buying socks. So that’s not even like an external factor. It is some internal thing of people saying, let me buy my father or my husband some new socks or underwear. Let me buy for Christmas. It’s like, I’m, we’re going to buy a bunch of fuzzy socks. I tell you, I never think, even think about fuzzy socks until Christmas. And granted, it’s still colder in November. It’s still cold in January and February, but we only seem to do it in
Ebony Vaz (32:30.565)
December. So what I mean from these behavioral metrics, that’s a good example of it. There are certain things that are internal and external that trigger people. There are certain things that are needs versus wants. I like to talk about it whenever we’re doing our teachings on is it a vitamin or is it a pain pill? Like what are you doing and what are you solving? And if you start to build metrics around these
things, the qualitative data points, it will help you with tracking the true measure of health and stability of your brain interpretation. But it’s not just likes and shares. Those are nice to have for sure, for sure. Cause you need all the help of beating the algorithms you can from social media. But those aren’t your behavioral metrics that you’re going to be looking for. And obviously when things go wrong on social media, those are some metrics that you can count on people’s
starting to voice their opinions and some people trolling, but you really need to dive into some more of those data points that you have access to in order to really define what is disability and the health of your organization when crisis happens.
Kchristaihne Castillo (33:47.992)
I agree, Ebony. So thank you so much for showing us that a strong reputation is built on the foundation of secure, efficient systems and deep behavioral understanding. So we discussed shifting from reactive PR to hyper-vigilant governance. We explored how behavioral patterns can predict reputation shifts and why bridging the gap within data and communication is the only way to navigate disruption.
without getting flattened by it. So if you’re worried about your brand’s technical vulnerabilities, you can book a consultation with Ebony Vaz on our website, abovepromotions.com And don’t forget to connect with Ebony on LinkedIn for more strategic insights. Thanks for tuning in to Sold Out Chat. Stay strategic, stay secure, and keep winning.
Conclusion
In conclusion, predicting customer behavior is a multifaceted challenge that requires more than just data analysis. By understanding the limitations of traditional market research, valuing human intuition, and fostering trust through transparency, businesses can navigate this complex landscape. Moving forward, the best strategies will be those that embrace the strengths of both AI and human empathy.
While you can’t truly “predict” a human, you can resolve the technical and strategic friction that makes their behavior seem erratic. At Above Promotions, we specialize in identifying the hidden variables that cause these disconnects.
Whether through a comprehensive MarTech Audit in our Innovation Lab to smooth out the digital journey, or deep behavioral analysis in our Strategic Insights Center to understand the “why” behind the data, we help you move from reactive guessing to highly informed anticipation. We help you find the holes in your strategy and turn the mystery of “unpredictable behavior” into a clear, scalable, and intentional path toward growth.
Ready to find the holes in your strategy?
- Watch the full episode on YouTube here
- Book a Consultation with our Innovation Lab to audit your brand alignment and stay ahead of the curve.
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